


night in the woods

by orphan_account



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Mild Horror, Minor Violence, but not really
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-02
Updated: 2019-10-02
Packaged: 2020-11-15 12:43:06
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,513
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20866427
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: He’s there for a second. A blink and you miss it kind of moment, the familiar recognition that breaks through the glazed over look in his eyes. “Felix.”“Stop.” It’s all wrong, coming out of a mouth that’s overstuffed with teeth, voice lacking all of the fondness that he’d gotten used to hearing in it over the years as they’d grown together. He feels ill.“Felix,” It says again, a finger raised to point. Then it turns the hand around, towards itself. Towards himself. “Dimitri.”--There is a beast that lurks in the woods.





	night in the woods

**Author's Note:**

> it's october, the spooky month, so my friend said "monster hunter felix" and i heard "felix and his monster bf". additional note that dimitri's beastly-ness is not a dig at his mental health, nor is it a manifestation of it.

There is a beast that lurks in the woods.

Some people say it’s lived there for centuries, others will claim it’s only been around for the last decade. Artistic renditions vary from an animal head, human body setup to sketches that seem more like a demon pulled from straight from a nightmare. There’s even debate about how it deals with its prey—decapitation, making use of its venomous claws, sometimes simply consuming them whole. Perhaps the one universal truth is that it is dangerous, and the woods should be avoided at all cost.

Of course, Felix considers himself an exception to the rule.

He doesn’t visit regularly, because that sets a routine. Sometimes he’ll bring typical human food, other times he brings bones and raw meat. He’ll stay anywhere from a few hours to five minutes, depending on how long his attention can be held or if someone else is expecting him. Really, it’s nothing more than a bad habit at best, and an attempt in soothing his own mind at worst. The sole reason that he keeps it a secret is because he’s more concerned about the person who tries to play hero and follow him into a place they’ll never come close to understanding.

Felix knows that ultimately, the fate of the beast lies outside of his hands. _ However_, he thinks as he climbs over a familiar set of trampled bushes, that did not mean the beast needed to resign himself to it.

“Leftovers,” is how he announces himself, noting the cabin has descended into further disrepair. The moss has overtaken a good portion of it now, and there’s more holes in the flooring than there was last time. The roof can barely even be called that anymore with the amount of moonlight bleeding inside, but once he clicks off his flashlight it helps Felix navigate further back without falling through the cracks. “Father won’t eat what Glenn cooks anymore, and I can’t say I’m much of a fan of it myself.”

The beast is curled in on itself atop a couch that has springs and cushioning sticking out of it from every possible section. Blue eyes blink open the moment Felix stops in front of it, analyzing him in silence from underneath a blanket. “Smells.”

“I’m plenty aware, but you’re not exactly the poster boy for hygiene and ‘good’ smells.” He raises his leg, kicks at where the beast’s ankles should be. “Get up. I put it on what’s left of the table.”

The eyes shut. “Tired.”

“Fine. I guess you better hope whatever else is crawling around in here doesn’t get to it before you do.” He turns, as if to leave. “I’ll—”

The grip around his wrist is tight, sharp nails threatening to puncture skin. Felix holds. “Stay.”

“Why? I have plenty better to do than to stand here and watch you sulk until you fall back asleep.”

“_Stay_.” Felix feels the word vibrate in his chest. “Please.”

He turns back to the couch, watches red eyes turn back to blue. The blanket has shifted enough for him to make out that there’s hair covering his head, not fur. “Then _ get up_.”

Eventually, the grip falls and the beast lets out some type of snarl as it twists, letting the blanket fall to the floor. There’s something different about the way it stands that makes Felix cringe, hunched over like it’s never walked on its own before. There’s also a number of scrapes and cuts that it must’ve gotten just from lying on the couch with the way they’ve already healed over, leaving dried streaks of blood in their wake. Even the smell of it has changed, more distinctly of earth and gore than anything else. Felix should be disgusted, but he holds out his hand anyway.

“I brought you some clean clothes, but you’re going to have to bathe for them.” Another snarl, but it takes the hand. “Save it for someone who cares, beast.”

It eats like the monster everyone makes it out to be. The noodles are flung around messily, sauce sticking to any inch of revealed skin like a magnet. Blue eyes locked on to whatever was being held in its hands, teeth bared despite no one who mattered being around to see it. There was a time where Felix tried to enforce the use of utensils, but the truth had revealed itself painfully quick: there was a limit to the amount of humanity still left in that body. And maybe that hurt to know more than any physical harm he’d ever experienced.

The issue was that Felix knew the beast better than anyone else. 

Fact #1: It had only been a beast for the past five years. There was no telling what else lurked in the woods, and Felix had no interest in finding out, but he had been there for the shift from man to something other. In some ways, it had been his fault (though he’d never admit it, as blame was a pointless thing to fixate on); in other ways, the beast was simply a victim of being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Whatever it was, be it a curse or a virus or a gift from a shitty god, it had taken the person that Felix had loved and transformed him into something that did not often deserve to be called by that person's name.

Fact #2: The beast has two primary forms: human and something akin to a wolf. Neither of those were the right words for the creature that Felix dealt with—the human had long black nails and teeth sharp enough to draw blood just from a graze, while the wolf boar tusks and was far too large and quick and strong to simply be a wolf—but it wasn’t like he could put much stock into the information his research had led to. Sometimes there was a third form, a beast stuck in the middle of both things, but it was a rare sight. 

Fact #3: It did not eat humans, but it did play with them. Most people who made it this far back in the woods got scared off just looking at the size of it, or seeing it shift from one form to the other. Few people still were actually injured by it, though it wasn’t like it held the vocabulary to say _ back off, i can’t control myself._ It acting by reacting, which meant if someone was aggressive towards it then it would return the gesture. Even Felix wasn’t initially able to get away with the swatting and kicks he does now, but they had learned. Adapted.

The beast leads the way to the nearest source of water, hand gripping Felix’s once more. It was a forever ago that Felix would’ve given anything for that sort of contact, and even now he can’t help that his heart stutters. After all, the beast does wear the face of someone he knows, someone he cares for and loves, and he had never really grown immune to that. It’s an embarrassing truth that he knows will stand the tests of time.

Despite the rapid healing, there are some wounds that take some additional care. When the beast discards its shirt, Felix makes note of the new discolored marking that sits deep below the skin. “Has someone else been coming out here?”

A grunt, then it sinks into the water. Whatever the temperature, it does not seem to bother him.

“I told you to let me put up traps. They don’t have to hurt anyone, just scare them off so they don’t take free shots at you.” Felix says. He leans back against a tree, watches the beast grasp at soap. “Just because you think you can handle it doesn’t mean that you should, y’know.”

“Okay.” There’s more to the statement, and Felix is used to reading between the lines. 

So he scowls, “It’s not okay for a bunch of teenagers to be dickheads to you because they’re bored and want a story to tell their shitty friends at school. Grown adults, either. If you keep—”

“Beast,” It says, turning to meet Felix’s eyes. “_Beast_.”

“Not because you want to be. Not because that’s who you are.” Felix says. “Or were.”

It raises a hand, pointing at Felix, then at itself. “_Beast._”

“I—That’s not the same thing. I know who you are.” He folds his arms across his chest, “Do you?”

He’s there for a second. A blink and you miss it kind of moment, the familiar recognition that breaks through the glazed over look in his eyes. “Felix.”

“Stop.” It’s all wrong, coming out of a mouth that’s overstuffed with teeth, voice lacking all of the fondness that he’d gotten used to hearing in it over the years as they’d grown together. He feels ill.

“Felix,” It says again, a finger raised to point. Then it turns the hand around, towards itself. Towards himself. “_Dimitri._”

He’d stopped using the name somewhere between years two and three, mainly because names were meant for people and not creatures. The beast was somewhere in the middle, Felix had decided, but it was not Dimitri. It could wear his clothes, share his face, even steal his voice from time to time, but it couldn’t walk into town and charm everyone with that nervous but sure smile. It couldn’t prattle on for hours at a time about everything and nothing at all, yet somehow mean every word of it. It couldn’t be selfless, not in the way that built up a lengthy list of friends and admirers. It couldn’t make stupid promises or think about a shared forever, could never finish that question that was never really a question at all—and so it was decidedly not Dimitri, or at the very least not the one he knew.

Admittedly, Felix thinks as the beast turns its back once more to clean the grime from its hair, calling it by the same name its aggressors shout at it was probably not the best move. He doesn’t use that very often either, only when he’s particularly annoyed, but it’d apparently been enough to erase even more of the remaining shreds of humanity inside of it. Usually he opts for no name at all, just speaking freely even though they haven’t truly held a conversation in what feels like a lifetime ago. It’s better than the mindless noises it makes, and still fills the silence. 

From behind it could be so easy to pretend that there is a person in the water. It bathes slowly, with an odd kind of care like it’d learned from watching someone else. The muscles in its arms and shoulders reveal themselves in a lazy way, not quite flexing but still eye-catching, and its hair has grown out unevenly near the middle of its spine. Cutting it is a hassle for several reasons, but it’s better to handle a night of suffering than watching it grow more disgusting from lack of care when he’s not around. He makes a mental note to pack scissors the next time.

And then, like always, the illusion is broken when it rises back onto the ground, shaking itself dry like a dog. Felix doesn’t bring towels anymore because they’re more one-time use when it comes to the beast, but in moments like this he’d rather continue to play pretend than accept the truth. The shift in behavior as it crawls over towards him, pulling on each layer of clothing with the skill of a newborn, is almost sickening but Felix had seen it too many times by now. Assisting it only seemed to make things worse, however, and so he just waits for it to finish and reorient itself, for them to go back to their fake normal.

He can’t just give it brand new clothing because of the smell, so Felix washes everything three times over in the same laundry detergent they’d used in their apartment. Sometimes he’ll work out in one of the too big shirts, add his own scent to it, and the clothes manage to hold up a lot longer. Even now, as they walk back towards the cabin, it sort of dips his head so its can smell the shirt more deeply. It’s almost endearing, so he can’t help but tease. “Bored of me now that you’ve gotten what you want, huh?”

“Never,” It comes out almost a whisper, eyes flashing faintly, grip on his hand tightening. “_Stay_.”

Felix could say something else cutting, play into the bait the beast unknowingly gives him, but he relents. And so they walk on.

The cabin had been a place of annoyance when they were younger, having to share the space with both of their immediate families on unneeded and generally unwanted retreats. Their parents got the two bedrooms while he, Glenn, and Dimitri were left to share the couch (and more often than not that meant he and Dimitri ended up making some kind of bed on the floor). Then as they’d shifted into teenagers, it had become more of a hideaway, a special type of place they could be lost and found simultaneously. When things at home grew dire, they could make their way there and pretend they were the only ones in the world who were left, the only ones who mattered. It held the excitement of running away without any of the dangers attached to it.

As adults, it was supposed to symbolize a new beginning—and in a bitter way, it had fulfilled that purpose. There was still liveliness in Dimitri’s eyes back then, a small smile stretched on his face as they’d walked up that familiar pathway. _ “I cleaned it up, I promise.” _

_ “Which version of cleaning? Yours or mine?” _

_ “Mine, obviously.” _ He’d stopped on the bottom step, brows furrowing. The sun had just begun to set, and the way the light hit his face was nothing short of something from a film. _ “Do you remember the last time we visited?” _

It was hard for Felix to forget anything when it came to their shared history, but that was far too embarrassing to admit aloud. _ “You asked me out and got so excited you broke the railing in half.” _

“_Yes, I…” _ His cheeks had tinted pink, _ “Anyway, I thought it would be nice to come back again. This place is full of memories, and I would like to add one more.” _

So they’d walked inside, completely unaware of whatever entity that would eventually cut their power, lure Felix outside, and make it so Dimitri could never be the same person he once was for some inexplicable reason that they’d never have an answer for. He’d told their fathers that Dimitri had simply gone away without wanting to be found, and it took three years before they’d decided they’d used up enough resources searching for him. All the while the stories of the beast in the woods grew more and more common, and Felix watched the beast shift and grow firsthand.

It was harder to muster the strength to visit back in the beginning, and maybe that’s part of the reason that it had embraced the more volatile, dangerous side of its new form so quickly. He still remembers the wave of nausea that had hit him the first time he’d been greeted with what was left of an animal carcass, how the beast’s eyes had shined with pride and then quickly filled with anger when he’d discarded it. They’d fought numerous times because of the changes, mostly because of his own growing frustration, but there was rarely ever blood drawn—Felix knew his limits and the moment the beast’s eyes glowed red, he pulled back. It had taken a long while before they’d created the bare minimum of trust they’d had in the past, but he had never truly worried for his own safety. He firmly believed that he’d remain an exception.

They climb up what’s left of the stairs and the nostalgia fades just as quickly as it entered. He leans against the door as the beast paces, hit with a burst of energy. It happens more often than not, especially after Felix has made it sit through something it’d rather not do, and sometimes they make a game of it: he’ll give the beast something to go find to bring back, and the time spent hunting typically gives him enough time to clean up or clear his head. Tonight, though, it probably just needs a minute alone. There’s too much jerkiness in its movements, as if simply standing in the same space is enough to overwhelm it.

“You can leave, y’know.” Felix hums. “Just take a lap and simmer down.”

“Ngh,” It tugs at the bottom of the shirt, then lets it go. “Stay.”

He raises a brow, “I didn’t say I was going anywhere.”

“No. Not.” There’s something else there, not simply an abundance of energy. This is _ anxiety_. “Someone.”

Felix can’t hear anything, so whoever is it must still be a ways out. The reaction that the beast is having is more of a concern, anyway; it’s not like this is the first time someone’s disturbed them from…whatever this is, but it usually handles the entire thing without blinking twice about its actions. “It’s whoever did that to your back, isn’t it? That’s why you’re acting like that.”

It rolls its head, letting out another low noise.

“Come over—don’t walk away from me.” He’s quick enough to get around him, block the doorway towards the living room. “Let me look. Take off the shirt.”

It stares.

“Don’t be difficult, or I’ll do it myself.”

It stares.

“Dimitri,” He forces out, and that seems to break whatever trance it’d locked itself into. The eyes stay red, though. “Take off the shirt.”

It moves slowly, but it complies. While Felix is nothing close to a doctor, he’d gotten fairly used to caring for wounds that didn’t just go away. Burning was a pretty popular way to get the beast angry, and so was using things like bear traps and throwing knifes dipped in something unidentifiable. Most people came out here wanting to make a spectacle, to be the person who could slay the beast that was pretty harmless to things that weren’t animals. It was as stupid as it was pointless, and despite the many warnings that went around in town it did not keep the determined away. So if he couldn’t stop them, that left him to clean up the messes they left behind. 

The marking seems to have faded a bit more, but there’s a green tint to it that would cause concern if it were a normal being. Still causes a bit of concern on this being, if Felix is honest with himself, because when he reaches out to touch it the beast snarls without him even making contact. _ Sensitive_, he notes. “You didn’t say you were in pain.”

_ “Tired.” _

“Not even remotely the same thing. Even you know that.” Felix huffs. “You don’t hide from me.”

It doesn’t respond, at least not verbally. That’s when Felix hears it, loud calls for the beast echoing into the night. The room feels heavier, somehow, and its breathing gets more rough and noisy, like an infection is rattling in its chest. Hell, for all he knows there could be. The beast could fall right before his eyes and there would be nothing he could do about it, outside of suffering through another phase of mourning.

The touch on his shoulder is light, not quite a grip but definitely a hold. He looks up, sees where the whites of its eyes have shifted black, sees its teeth elongate. “Stay. _ In-side_.”

And Felix nods, because that’s what it wants to see. He watches it cross the room, look back towards him, as if expecting him to change his mind. Then it leaves.

There aren’t really a lot of things in the cabin that could be used as weapons anymore, mainly because Felix had stumbled in on far too many attempts of the beast trying to mutilate its own face and body with them. It was also probably not the greatest idea to leave things around the stray brave idiot could use if they’d managed to get inside, and so he’d taken away the things he couldn’t simply destroy. Still, he’s not a complete idiot—he’s well aware of the dangers the woods can hold, so he’d limited himself to three options that he kept hidden in the unused bedroom.

The baseball bat had belonged to Glenn originally, but he’d lost interest in the sport before Felix could even think of lifting it up on its own. Wood would guarantee pain, but not as much sturdiness and reliability that he was looking for. The golf club, which had never been used but was always brought along on trips no matter the location, was already bent from a prior attack. It wasn’t ruled out for that reason, but because Felix knew it would distract the beast from whatever stunt it was trying to pull. That left the sword, which he’d had a little experience in wielding when he was younger, when his father would take it off the wall and show him the way their ancestors had used it years ago. The weight of it is a little hefty in his hands even now, but if there was still some mercy left out there for him he wouldn’t need to use it tactically at all.

But then an inhuman scream pierces the air, and his hopes for a peaceful night quickly fade.

He can’t move too quickly because of the weapon, though it’s probably for the best he doesn’t startle the beast. Its hearing was only good when it wasn’t focusing intensely on something, and it was not in a state where rationality took even a little of its focus. Felix ends up walking a good ways out before he hears the snickering, sees the boys who would soon be men staring upwards at a tree. He doesn’t need to follow their line of sight to know what’s up there, but he does anyway, if only to see how far gone it had gotten. The stance implies four legs, but the lack of snarls suggests two. It’s hard to tell with certainty without his flashlight.

“We brought more gifts this time, beast. Don’t you want to come play?” One of them tries, throwing what looks like a water balloon, but is clearly anything but from the way it breaks on the ground. The liquid sizzles, eating at the life around it. “I promise it’ll be just as fun as last time!”

“What the fuck are you idiots doing out here?” Felix hisses, stepping into the open space. The beast growls out something unintelligible. “Throwing, what is that, _ acid? _Do you have a death wish?”

The boy scoffs, “All it’s gonna do is fucking whine like a bitch while we run after it for awhile. What the fuck are _ you _ doing out here?”

“I—” It growls again, this time loud enough to shake the trees. “Would you _ shut up? _ You’re doing a whole lot of fuck all from up there.”

The group jeers, and another boy speaks up. “Aw, you one of those sympathizers or something? You must be real fuckin’ stupid to not know what that thing’s capable of, but I can show you.”

Quick as lightning, something’s shot up in the tree. The beast comes down but it lands hard, on its side and not its feet, though it’s quick to stand back up. The face is gone, replaced with a snout and more gnarled teeth and a gaze that sends a chill up even Felix’s spine. This is something different than before. “What are you doing to him?”

“It’s just something we cooked up to make it remember what the fuck it is. You ever seen that thing, walking around with human clothes on, like it’s real people…” He spits, “Disgusting. Fuckin’ disgraceful even. We fix shit like that.”

The moment they start moving the beast moves in a blur, stopping short of directly in front of Felix. It’s enough to startle them, but not stop them, and they launch something else that it narrowly dodges while barreling into them It’s one of a handful of times that Felix has seen it engage with a human that isn’t him, but it’s not the warning pushes or nips it usually gives. There’s real aggression in the movements, like he _ wants _ to hurt them. Like he’s stopped seeing them as harmless and now they’re genuine threats.

“Fuck,” He drops the sword entirely, running over just in time to hear the crunch of bone mixing with a separate string of swears. “Get the fuck out of here!”

“I can’t fuckin’ walk!” Felix tries to steel his stomach to the overwhelming amount of blood, to ankle that’s been separated from the body, to the way the beast is drooling and fighting in his grasp. “Ow, shit!”

The original boy makes eye contact with Felix as the other two pull the injured one away. They’ve got a towel to wrap his leg in, so apparently they’d expected something this. That only makes him more wary about the entire setup. “I have every right to kill you both, right now.”

“You won’t.” He doesn’t look away, but hold grip slacks while the beast thrashes around.

The gun doesn’t surprise him, not at this point, but it’s an unfamiliar model. Custom made, Felix guesses, and he’s now looking down the barrel of it. “You threatening me?”

“If you kill me,” He has to raise his voice a little, with the sounds he’s countering against, but he keeps his voice even. “He will knock you on your ass, and he will take every bullet you manage to aim at him before he tears into your neck and you bleed out. Then, he will kill all three of them, and then he will drag your lifeless bodies to wherever you call home, because he’s good at tracking scents, and he wants your families or friends or whomever to watch as he separates you limb from limb. Then he’ll probably do the same to them, and everyone else in this shithole of a town, because there won’t be anyone alive to stop him from doing otherwise.”

“And if I kill it?”

The smile stretches across his face with ease, “You’ll be dealing with an entirely different kind of monster, if you succeeded.”

Felix is pretty sure that whatever is in those bullets, what they might still have on their persons, what they might have in their car or their truck or their home—it would kill Dimitri in seconds. That boy holds himself like he’s someone who’s done this a thousand times, reeking of the same confidence that Felix is pretending to have right now. It’s probably something they’ve done all their lives, taught by a family member in the hopes of carrying on some fucked up legacy, but they’re still kids. An adult of their skillset wouldn’t toy around with a beast, they’d take their shot and move the fuck on to the next one. Unflinching coldness and a sense of duty is what they lack, why the ones hanging back look ready to bolt and why who Felix assumes is the leader slowly lowers the weapon.

“If he dies—”

“You shouldn’t have been fucking around out here in the first place. Get going before your friend bleeds out.” Felix says, and he’s a little amazed that shuts things down instead of riling him up more. He waits until they’re out of sight and then a few minutes more before he releases the beast from his hold, ignoring the way he’d begun to gnaw on his leg. So long as he could walk and the marks weren’t deep, he’d brush it off. “Let’s go.”

The beast darts ahead but Felix knows the woods well enough to navigate his way back on his own. He picks up the sword, thumbs against the edge of the blade, and walks on in relative silence. 

By the time he makes it back to the cabin the pain in his leg is more intense than before, and so he ends up wasting some of the drinking water he’d brought to do a little bit of clean up, using the last bit of gauze in the first aid kit to wrap around where teeth had sunk in. Not for the first time does he feel like a living chew toy, and the beast just runs circles around the place in the meanwhile, stopping every few laps to rub his head against Felix’s side like an apology. 

Eventually, he tires himself out with the running, lets himself shift back to a less monstrous appearance. There’s little shame in the way he regathers his clothing, tugs it on to his misshapen body, and when he comes back to the broken stairs he looks up at Felix with glazed over blue eyes. Tilts his head, dark brows furrowing as he says, “Sad.”

Felix hadn’t even realized he’d started crying. He wipes his face with the back of his palm, sniffling. “You shouldn’t have dressed up when you’re still covered in blood. You need another bath already.”

“Sad,” He repeats. Then he holds out a hand. “Safe.”

There’s dried blood smeared into the cracks of his palms. Felix takes the hand anyway.

It turns into him being lifted, carried with care to the back of the cabin where the only room that’s really kept up is. The bed smells but it’s not uncomfortable to lay on, and he wasn’t planning on sleeping anyway. Dimitri puts him down near the center, but he keeps himself on the edge. Felix has laid with him more often than not, so he pushes himself up into a sitting position the moment he realizes. “Lay down.”

“Hurt.” He says._ “Scare.” _

Even if he’d wanted to, Felix can’t deny it. The thing that had attacked a person, had removed a limb from a human and had started to bring it towards him did not act like any form of the beast that he had known. Part of him wants to write it off to whatever those dickhead were throwing at him, but the other part of him can picture himself in that person’s place all too well. It had fought against him the entire time he’d been holding it, barely recognized him for who he was and the marks on his leg proved that. He was afraid, and it would’ve been more scary if he wasn’t.

But that beast was long gone for now, and he could see with every breath that Dimitri takes that he was tired. He’s curling in on himself, even now, trying to make himself smaller. Felix hadn’t put the sword away—if he tried to leave now, whether he’d hidden it or not, he’d only expect to come back to yet another horror show. He needed him to sleep. He needed him to stop remembering to worry.

“Lay down before I make you,” Felix eventually says, and he turns at that. “I mean it, Dimitri.”

He wishes it didn’t make his heart ache to see the clouds part in his eyes, for Dimitri to really look at him like he used to, like Felix had done something worthy of being admired. He watches him shift around, lay flat on his stomach but not move any closer. So he takes his wrists and pulls, because if Felix makes him angry now it wouldn’t really matter, pulls him close enough he can the warmth radiating off of him. Looks at him and tells him, “I will never be afraid of you.”

Dimitri looks up at him, presses his face into Felix’s side. “Sorry.”

“I know,” He runs his fingers through his hair, watches his breathing even out. “You can’t stay here. Not like this.”

Teeth mouth at his skin. “Stay.”

“I know. But they’re getting too reckless here, and so are you.”

Dimitri stills. “_Stay_.”

“You’re a fool.” Felix huffs. He moves himself carefully so he’s laying down again, takes both his hands and cups his face with them. Makes sure he’s looking at him instead of through him, so the words sink in better. “There’s no place in this world you’re going without me.”

There’s something inherently cute about the ways his teeth spill out when he smiles, but they could never compare to the ones Felix grew up with. It still meets his eyes, though, and that’s what matters. “Love.”

“I know. Stupid.” He presses his lips to Dimitri’s forehead. “I love you, too. Unfortunately.”

He growls at that, but it’s in jest and they both know it. They end up going back and forth with it, lazy and easy, until Felix’s got a beast sleeping peacefully on his chest and a heart that feels full.

  
  


**Author's Note:**

> i love dimitri and felix so much it's unreal and one day i will write them actually happy!!!!!!!! expect more fun aus like this as the month carries on though


End file.
